RBC says a DIY AI replacement for Office could cost 11 times more over five years
TiernanRayTech · x · 2026-07-28
RBC Capital modeled the five-year total cost of replacing enterprise software with DIY AI systems and found the economics can be dramatically worse than buying vendor software.
In the example cited, a DIY AI version of Microsoft Office would cost about 11× the license price, or roughly $343,000 over five years. The report’s cost stack includes one-time build effort, run costs, maintenance, risk, and quality gaps.
The argument is that the real cost of DIY is not just engineering time: it also includes failures, security exposure, and the possibility of a breach severe enough to become a multi-million-dollar loss.
The commentator notes that the bigger threat may not be DIY software at all, but AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic packaging the replacement themselves.
Related event: RBC Report: DIY AI Costs Up to 11x More Than Commercial Software(2 posts)→
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